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Review: Hotel Dash - Suite Vertical Madness

Review: Hotel Dash - Suite Vertical Madness

November 1, 2010

Overview

It seems that Flo needs to make some more reliable friends, because one of them has booked honeymoons for several couples in the worst hotels in the city. As a brilliant entrepreneur, it's up to you to transform these undesirable complexes into the perfect resort for newly weds.

Features

Hotel Dash has 3 hotels with 10 levels each, making a total of 30 levels. Your goal is to earn enough money and star bills to improve the features of your hotel. Each building has many possible upgrades that are purchased with cash. In order to build the perfect room for a honeymoon, you use your stars to decorate with curtains, rugs, lamps, and other objects. Your customers will be of 10 unique characteristics and will act differently based on their personality.

The Good

There's something about the gameplay style of the Dash series that makes them so much fun to play. In Hotel Dash, you first guide guests to their rooms and bring them their luggage. After that, they will request several things, such as room service, towels, pillows, and request with spills. Finally, you collect your hard-earned cash and bring the laundry to the cleaning bin. The different characters will require you to perform certain tasks. For example, hungry men will ask for more food, and newly weds will ask for additional pillows. If you liked Diner Dash or any of the other games in the series, then this one will feel superb. Hotel Dash contains its own assortment of unique features. While the game is still largely about getting color and action combos, the star system adds another influential factor. Each of your hotel rooms can be upgraded for $750 and will then provide you with higher customer tips. You earn a star for every group of guests that stays in a deluxe room. These stars are used to purchase accessories to adorn a special room for the couple that your friend booked. You can also buy other upgrades for the hotel, including sneakers to make Flo walk faster and a cart that allows her to carry up to 6 items instead of 2. By placing fruit baskets in empty rooms, changing the wallpaper, hiring saxophone players, buying flowers, and hanging paintings, you increase customer tips and patience. The elevators can also be upgraded to move faster, and the cleaning system can be altered so that you can eliminate spills with greater efficiency. This extensive system gives Hotel Dash much more depth than the other games of the series and also allows you to choose the features that you think are more important. The graphics are similar to those of the other Dash games, with detailed character designs and smooth actions. A great thing about the game is that you can change the hotel to make it look however you want it to by buying or avoiding certain upgrades. On the level selection screen, there are currently 2 facilities that are "under construction". These will likely be included in a future update, along with perhaps a new endless mode.

The Bad

Once you fully upgrade Flo's cart, you can plan out up to 6 actions ahead of time. However, you still can't cancel any tasks. Many of the buttons aren't that big, and it's easy to make a mistake. Every time you ask her to perform an invalid action, Flo stands there and shakes her head for a while, lowering the potential customer tip value with every second. Especially with the new elevator system, you now have to wait for an elevator to go to the 4th floor and take you to the desired location before being able to do much. It would be nice to have a button that cancels all planned actions. Each level has a normal goal and an expert goal. While you'll find yourself going back and playing many of them, the game's replay value is hurt by the fact that starting a previously completed level gives you all the upgrades you already purchased. Playing level 1 of a hotel is no fun when you've already upgraded everything and gets too easy. Also, you sometimes cannot play certain levels again once you've passed them. Level 2, for example, asks for you to upgrade a room to continue. If you've already upgraded all your rooms to 3 stars, then you'll be stuck on the screen. Whereas an endless or challenge mode exists in the other Dash games, Hotel Dash is currently lacking one and will be boring to play after finishing all the levels.

The Verdict

Hotel Dash provides you with many new features to experiment with and get to know better. It uses many techniques from other games of the series and could be the most intense Dash yet. The game could use some content updates, but even now, getting through the 30 levels with expert score will take some time. Hotel Dash is a should buy for $2.99 and is a terrific time management experience.

Mentioned apps

$2.99
Diner Dash Deluxe
Diner Dash Deluxe
PlayFirst, Inc.
$0.99
Cooking Dash
Cooking Dash
PlayFirst, Inc.
Free
Wedding Dash
Wedding Dash
PlayFirst, Inc.

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